Charles Darwin

The Fisher Library has one of the foremost collections of Charles Darwin material in Canada. The collection began in 1968 when the University of Toronto acquired materials from Darwin bibliographer Richard B. Freeman of University College London. The collection has been considerably augmented and expanded over the past 40-plus years from many different sources.

The Fisher's Darwin collection attempts to be comprehensive by gathering together all the editions, impressions, issues and states of all of Darwin's works in English and other languages into which they have been translated. It also contains a considerable number of works of Darwin's predecessors and contemporaries who wrote on evolution, which provide a context for the natural science of his time, as well as an extensive literature of books directly influenced by Darwin's work.

To hear Fisher Director Richard Landon talk about the original acquisition of Richard Freeman's Darwin material by University of Toronto librarian David Esplin in the 1960s, please click here or on the sound icon.